In its just filed motion to dismiss the lawsuit, OpenAI unleashed on the New York Times. I can’t remember reading a brief as hard-hitting from the opening paragraphs as this one.
“The allegations in the Times’s Complaint do not meet its famously rigorous journalistic
standards. The truth, which will come out in the course of this case, is that the Times paid
someone to hack OpenAI’s products. It took them tens of thousands of attempts to generate the
highly anomalous results that make up Exhibit J to the Complaint. They were able to do so only
by targeting and exploiting a bug (which OpenAI has committed to addressing) by using deceptive
prompts that blatantly violate OpenAI’s terms of use.“And even then, they had to feed the tool
portions of the very articles they sought to elicit verbatim passages of, virtually all of which already
appear on multiple public websites. Normal people do not use OpenAI’s products in this way.“Journalism has undergone many changes in the digital age, and may well undergo more
with the advent of AI. OpenAI has established important partnerships with many leaders in the
news industry—from large enterprises like the Associated Press and Axel Springer to the dozens
of smaller and local outlets associated with the American Journalism Project—to creatively
explore and implement AI solutions that assist investigative reporting, create enhanced reader
experiences, and improve business operations. The Times’s suggestion that the contrived attacks
of its hired gun show that the Fourth Estate is somehow imperiled by this technology is pure fiction.“So too is its implication that the public en masse might mimic its agent’s aberrant activity.”
OpenAI motion to dismiss New York Times lawsuit
Here are the claims the motion seeks to dismiss:
(1) OpenAI seeks partial dismissal of Count I (Direct Copyright Infringement) to the extent it is based on acts of reproduction that occurred more than three years before this action. Infra Section IV(A).
(2) OpenAI seeks full dismissal of Count IV (Contributory Infringement) for failure to allege that it had actual knowledge of the specific acts of direct infringement alleged. Infra Section IV(B).
(3) OpenAI seeks full dismissal of Count V (Copyright Management Information or “CMI” Removal) for several reasons, including failure to identify the CMI at issue, failure to allege OpenAI “remove[d]” CMI from any datasets or outputs, failure to allege “distribution,” and failure to plead facts that suggest that OpenAI acted with scienter. Infra Section IV(C). And
(4) OpenAI seeks full dismissal of Count VI (Unfair Competition by Misappropriation) on grounds of Copyright Act preemption.